The Farriers Registration Council is a body put in place by the Parliament to regulate farriery (caring for a horse's hooves and shoeing it if necessary). As the governing authority responsible for maintaining the register of farriers, the FRC plays a crucial role in ensuring equine welfare through the enforcement of professional standards. Farriers are required to follow the code of conduct and to be registered with the FRC by law, making the FRC's digital presence a critical touchpoint for both professionals and horse owners.
Their main objectives are to prevent and avoid equine suffering, ensuring horse owners receive satisfactory service.
The challenge
Having become quite dated, it was essential to modernise the website’s design and structure. This secure platform serves as a centralised hub where farriers manage their requirements. Farriers must access their annual payments and Continued Professional Development (CPD) updates via their FRC accounts, so a secure, seamless login platform was necessary to improve the user experience.
Through a series of workshops and research by talking to farriers, we identified areas for improvement which we’ve detailed below.
An opportunity for alignment
During our initial workshop it was interesting to hear the different viewpoints and expectations between the farriers and the council. Because of all the regulations, we heard from the research that professionals can get the wrong impression that the FRC is ‘getting in the way’ by slowing down the process. However, the authoritative body is there to ensure quality and safe work is accomplished on horses, and sometimes there is no shortcut in this context. By clarifying the process and making everything transparent for both parties, Liquid Light aims to loosen the tension between those two sides. After all, everyone has the same aim: that equine hoof care is conducted safely.
The homepage redesign and sitemap both set the foundations towards this goal. The landing page addresses both farriers and horse owners, providing quick access to essential information for both parties. The sitemap is structured similarly, where users can either log in to their My FRC platform (as farriers) or learn more about farriery, and how to begin your journey into the industry.
Find a Farrier
One of the key tools for horse owners and farriers alike is the ability to search for registered farriers on the website. This makes it easy for horse owners to find nearby farriers and therefore provides a great platform for farriers themselves.
Originally, a map was displayed on their farrier search, but because farriers come to the horse owners and not the other way around, this map was not only unnecessary, but it also provided a level of vulnerability to the farriers by having their location so accurately displayed. Therefore, the redesign of this search tool has discarded the idea of the map, making it safer for farriers.
An API has been implemented to provide the horse owners with an indication of how close each farrier is to the location entered in the search bar. The search results are clear and concise, easy to refine by last name (if known by the user) or to show Approved Training Farriers only if desired.
Additionally, the search has its own landing page which informs the horse owners on the risks of using unregistered farriers and how to recognise a registered one. All this essential information is linked to separate pages where the user can learn more.
Digitalisation of physical forms
By far the most challenging aspect of the FRC website was its forms. Their original site had a few built-in digital forms, mainly focused on the My FRC account area. On the other hand, all the applications, enrolments and complaints were received physically.
The first step to improving those forms and making them more accessible for aspiring (and/or practising) farriers was to digitalise them. This way, the enrolment and registration processes would improve and speed up exponentially. The overseas applicants would benefit the most from this, as sending a physical registration form from abroad is especially tedious and time-consuming; digitalising this process will open doors to more aspiring foreign farriers.
While tackling this task, we realised how complex and challenging those forms are. The registration forms, as well as the ‘complaints against a farrier’ ones, present an abundance of conditional logic (for example, if you select a certain answer, the user proceeds to path A, but if another answer is selected, the form will continue on path B). This process is simplified on printed forms (If Yes, turn to page 10 and answer those additional questions). However, on CMS, this meant that classic TYPO3 form builder wouldn’t suffice, and back-end and front-end development was required.
A translation can never be faithful to the original, there is always the necessity of adaptation to the new format; While this is true, the client requested that the forms be kept as close to the source as possible.
As designers, we had to take this into account when creating the new forms, and at the same time make sure that accessibility requirements are met. We strive to deliver the best possible user experience to farriers and horse owners alike, so we shifted our attention to the rigorous usability standards established by GOV.UK (UK Government website).
Key principles we adopted included were:
- Breaking long forms into manageable sections to reduce cognitive load
- Implementing clear error handling and validation
- Using plain language and consistent terminology
- Providing clear guidance at the point of need
- Ensuring forms work across all devices and screen sizes
My FRC Area
The one-stop-shop for farriers: we redesigned the dashboard to provide at-a-glance visibility of registration status, upcoming requirements, and recent activity. The platform has been elevated by creating smooth flows for updating personal details and annual returns and making Continued Professional Development (CPD) a more intuitive points-based system. All of those have been confusing to farriers with a MyFRC account, as discovered during our research.
Migration, Integration and Technical Platform
A crucial aspect of this project was the seamless migration of historical data from the FRC's legacy system. Given the regulatory nature of the FRC's work, maintaining data integrity throughout this process was paramount. Our choice of TYPO3 as the content management system was driven by its enterprise-class security features and robust data handling capabilities - essential for an organisation managing regulatory compliance.
User data is managed through our integration of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, and payments can be made by farriers through our integration of Elevon’s Opayo payment system. This integration ensures that critical registration data remains synchronised across all systems. Rather than creating separate data silos, the new website serves as an integrated front-end to the FRC's core business systems, streamlining workflows and reducing the risk of data inconsistencies.
The Result
The new website and MyFRC area has fundamentally improved how both the farriers and the council are able to to interact with the website. By digitising complex processes while maintaining regulatory rigour we’ve helped the FRC achieve key outcomes:
- Streamlined registration - reduced processing times for new registrations, particularly beneficial to overseas applicants
- Enhanced accessibility - forms and processing have been added or improved so are now clear and intuitive
- Secure service - Removing the map and implementing a secure login process for both Farriers and the Council
- Better data management - It’s now easier for Farriers to record their CPD, while the data flows for the council are clear and easy to manage
We look forward to continuing our partnership with the Farriers Registration Council, so that we can develop new capabilities for the future.
